Allan Pinkerton

Allan Pinkerton (25 August 1819-1 July 1884) was a famous Scottish-American detective and spy who founded the "Pinkertons", a national detective agency. From 1861 to 1862, he led the Union's intelligence services during the American Civil War, and he would later launch an unsuccessful hunt for Jesse James.

Biography
Allan Pinkerton was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1819, and he was a member of the Chartists as a young man. He emigrated to the United States in 1842 and built a cabin in Dundee Township, Illinois, and he became involved with Chicago abolitionists in 1844 and made his home a stop on the Underground Railroad. In 1849, he became Chicago's first police detective after spying on the notorious Banditti of the Prairie and helping the local sheriff take them down. In 1850, he founded the North-Western Police Agency, now known as the "Pinkertons". In 1859, he helped purchase clothes and supplies for John Brown before the Raid on Harpers Ferry; Brown was hanged while wearing one of Pinkerton's suits. When the American Civil War broke out, Pinkerton became head of the Union intelligence service, preventing Abraham Lincoln from being assassinated in Baltimore in 1861 and exposing Confederate spies. He was succeeded by Lafayette Baker in 1862. After the war, he went after the Reno Gang and other train robbers, and he was later hired by a railroad company to catch Jesse James; when the railroad company cut off his funding due to his lack of progress, he continued to hunt him at his own expense. After James killed one of Pinkerton's undercover agents, Pinkerton ended the chase. Pinkerton, who opposed labor unions, allowed for the government to use his agency to crush strikes, and he also assisted the Spanish government in crushing the Ten Years' War rebellion in Cuba in 1872. In 1884, he slipped on pavement and bit his tongue, which developed gangrene; he died on 1 July 1884.